The gauging of the SM gauge group introduces a new explicit source of breaking of the
global symmetries (besides the mass terms). An analysis of the 1-loop effective
potential, along the lines of Ref. [1]}, yields
additional contributions to the masses of the PNGBs,
which are in general divergent, but controlled by the small, perturbative couplings of the SM gauge fields
circulating in the loops.
Furthermore, they
introduce an instability in the Higgs effective potential:
the negative sign of fermion loops
ultimately triggers EWSB. Because of the weakness of the
couplings, these effects can be arranged
to be small, and yield a value for \(v_W\) 
that is smaller than the decay constant of the PNGBs
as it would emerge in isolation,
from the strong dynamics sector only. In the literature, the combination of these phenomena goes
under the name of vacuum misalignment.
